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From Chapter 3. The expanded worksheet, with more room than the printed version, plus five worked example maps for different kinds of company.
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The Functional Map is the founder's bird's eye view: which functions the company needs to perform, who owns them, how healthy they are, where friction lives, and which system needs attention first.
It is not an org chart, not a department chart, and not a software dashboard. A dashboard shows data. The Functional Map shows meaning.
It is the difference between "I know my business" and "my business can be understood by someone other than me."
Start from the twelve standard functions in the Functionalities Table, then edit. Add anything that is genuinely a function in your company and is not on the list. Delete anything you do not actually do.
Common additions founders forget:
Every chapter in Part Two uses the same anatomy. Use it here too, one page per planet. This is the part that makes a map useful rather than decorative.
| Layer | What lives here | Prompt |
|---|---|---|
| Core | The decisions and definitions. What the company is allowed to say, who answers for it, what the words mean. | What three decisions, if we made them once and wrote them down, would end most arguments on this planet? |
| Mantle | The instruments. The small number of readings that turn activity into information. | What would tell us this planet is in trouble before a customer tells us? |
| Crust | The rituals. Where the work physically happens and where the record gets made. | What are the moments where something moves, and does the record move with it? |
| Atmosphere | The rhythms. Weekly, monthly, quarterly. Without these the planet decays. | Who looks at this, how often, and in which slot in the calendar? |
| Highways | The routes to other planets. What leaves here, what arrives, and in what form. | What does this planet hand to the next one, and what breaks when the handoff is verbal? |